Facebook Now Lets Candidates Target Political Fanatics

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Facebook Now Lets Candidates Target Political Fanatics

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For some of us, Facebook is a place to share photos, watch videos, and catch up on the top news stories making the rounds. For others, it's a platform for talking politics and bashing anyone who'd dare to disagree.

You know the type. Maybe it's your uncle, who's always sharing stories about LGBT issues, or your family friend who likes every pro-gun "Page" she can find, or that guy you knew in college who kept posting media reactions to the Benghazi hearing. They're the people who are most likely to get in heated comment feuds and who, depending on your political leanings, the people you're most likely to unfollow as the 2016 election season heats up. They're also the people that the presidential candidates want on their sides. Now, Facebook is making it even easier to get in front of them.

Facebook uses all of these actions to determine if users are liberal or conservative, then segments that audience for political campaigns.

This week, Facebook is rolling out a new feature that enables advertisers to target so-called "political influencers." These are people who like lots of political Pages, click on political ads, and share content from political parties and organizations. Facebook uses all of these actions to determine if users are liberal or conservative, then segments that audience for political campaigns.

"People are more likely to trust information that their friends share," says Matt Idema, Facebook's vice president of monetization product marketing, "so it is valuable for campaigns to reach people who frequently share political information on Facebook."

Preaching to the choir isn't always at the top of a political campaign's to-do list. More often than not, it's the undecided voters and the people who don't have much voting history that campaigns spend the bulk of their time and money trying to convince. And yet Idema is right that word of mouth recommendations are far more effective than advertisements could ever be, making this segment particularly important to campaigns.

Of course, there are already plenty of ways for candidates to target supporters—and potential supporters—on Facebook. With Facebook's custom audiences, they can even upload their own supporter databases and target ads directly to those people. The problem is, they have no way of knowing whether or not those people even talk about politics online. By layering the political influencer filter on that audience, it's all but guaranteed. The hope is that all these noisy Facebook users will amplify the candidate's message, and help lead the grassroots movement online.